IVR has been the standard for inbound call routing since the 1980s. Customer satisfaction with IVR is famously low: only 28% of callers report a positive IVR experience in recent CX surveys.
AI voice agents are widely replacing IVR for both inbound and outbound flows because they handle natural language ("I want to return my last order") instead of forcing menu navigation.
Inbound AI voice agents typically reduce average handle time by 30–60% vs IVR + human-agent escalation.